Recently, in the field of silver halide photographic light sensitive material field, rapid processability for a silver halide photographic light sensitive material, and reduction of a processing replenisher replenishing amount or a processing waste solution are required. Much study on the silver halide photographic light sensitive material, processing solutions and automatic processors has been made.
Reduction of the developer replenisher replenishing amount lowers oxidation resistance, since the developer remains for a long time. Therefore, addition of a larger amount of a sulfite, a carbonate or a borate to the developer is effective but results in excessively high salt concentration.
Ions such as Ca, Mg and Fe are entered into processing solutions from water for dissolving the processing composition, or from light sensitive materials to be processed. These ions react with a carbonate ion to produce precipitates or silver sludge, resulting in soil on the rollers of an automatic processor or uneven development.
As a chelating agent to sequester such metal ions are known ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) and ethylenetriaminepentaaacetic acid (ETPA). However, these chelating agents react with the small amount of an iron salt present in developers to produce iron chelate compounds which have the disadvantage of accelerating oxidation reaction of the developing agent in the developer. Further, in waste solutions these chelating agents have poor biodegradability and are difficult to decompose in treatment facilities for drainage, resulting in environmental problems.
Recently, chelating agents with high biodegradability have been used. However, though these agents enhance oxidation resistance and improve biodegradability, they cause problems in greatly increasing residual color on the processed light sensitive material. When a light sensitive material containing a hydrazine compound to provide a high contrast, image is processed in an automatic processor, there occur the following major problems: the linearity of the characteristic curve or image sharpness markedly deteriorates, fog nuclei at unexposed portions of the processed material increase, a large amount of black points, so-called black spots, occur at edge portions of the processed material, resulting in an adverse effect on photographic properties of the processed material, and soil occurs inside the automatic processor.